Over the past four months, the mobile game Block Blast has taken Urban by storm.  Sixty percent of the 90 students who participated in a recent Urban Legend survey have the Block Blast app installed on their phones and 75% of those who have the app play it at least four days a week.  

Block Blast is a Tetris-like puzzle game for mobile devices. In each round, players receive three differently shaped blocks and must place them on a grid. Players aim to clear rows or columns by filling them up with blocks in order to create more space to place new blocks. However, if players can no longer fit a new block anywhere on the grid, they lose the game. A player can theoretically make the game go on forever by planning ahead and consistently making the right decisions.

Some students prefer a less strategic approach to Block Blast. “[Block Blast] is colorful and there’s not much thought behind it. It’s kind of an aimless task, just like a fidget in a way, but digital,” Cole Ambrocente ’26 said.

Part of Block Blast’s appeal to students could come from its slow speed and relaxed gameplay. “I can just pause it and come back to it,” Jack Kotas ’26 said.

According to Pieke Simonian, a sophomore at the Bay School, Block Blast’s surge in popularity is not unique to Urban. “I think probably 60% of our grade plays Block Blast,” she said in an interview with The Urban Legend. “When there’s a morning meeting, there’s a bunch of people who sit in a room [and] you can stand in the back and see all the phones [opened to] Block Blast.”

Currently, Block Blast has 67 million downloads on the Apple App Store and is ranked first in the top free games category. According to Block Blast’s developers, Hungry Studios, the game rose to popularity due to the increase in demand for casual games that have straightforward gameplay that is easy to pick up. “Even those who don’t consider themselves ‘gamers’ regularly play casual games,” the Block Blast developers wrote on their website Hungry Studio.

Students can play Block Blast at any time, thanks to its convenience. “Sometimes I get bored and don’t want to do my homework, so I whip [my phone] out [to play Block Blast],” Ambrocente said. “On the commute to school, I’m always [playing] Block Blast.”  

Block Blast’s advertisements on social media have also caught the eye of Urban students. “I saw the ad that says ‘I don’t need her, I have Block Blast,’” said Kotas.

In addition to an ad campaign, Block Blast has also gained popularity through social media. “I heard about Block Blast [when] I saw everyone posting their high scores on social media,”  Ambrocente said. 

There is a wide range of high scores at Urban, though some only consider high scores that have passed a certain threshold to be competitive. “A competitive high score is probably around the 150,000 to 200,000 range,” Dreas Marchiel ’26 said. 

Achieving a competitive high score requires players to maintain a streak by eliminating rows or columns every three moves for an extended period. “I just played for five minutes at a time, three times a day for a couple weeks and eventually my score just built up,” said Grayson Hoe ’25, a student with a high score of one million. “It’s mostly about building a board that makes it easy to keep your combo alive. I think my highest combo was like 90 and that gets you a lot of points at once.”

Many are apprehensive about a recent app update that has changed players’ ability to achieve these high scores. “There are different blocks now. [The game gives] you the perfect block that you need, which is kind of good, but it feels like cheating,” Simonian said.

In addition to concerns about the new update, some students suspect that Block Blast has peaked in popularity. Ananya Dendi ’26 said, “I think it’s one of those trend games [and] I think it will die at some point.”